This is ULTRA BASIC stuff again, but it fits well in the back to basics series.

"I can't approach, I have approach anxiety, I am a failure" = what can we do to adress that problem?

Something I field tested is gaining social momentum. What is social momentum? How does it relate to PU and AA ? How can we gain social momentum?

1-KNOWING YOUR MAGICAL POWER: What is social momentum?

Approaching is not the same thing as social momentum. Approaching is walking up to someboy you don't know and interacting with that person. As a result, you get out of your head, at least you are not as much in your head as you were before approaching. Social momentum is the aggregate of the approaches you made, and the modifications of your mind that resulted from them.
Example 1 : you didn't interact or you didn't talk with anybody for 15 years. As a result, you feel anxious talking to somebody, as if it were the most amazing thing of your entire life. You seem weird to the others, and they can feel it.
Example 2 : it is your birthday and everybody came to see you. Everyone is talking to you, everyone is feeling good around you. As a result, if anybody introduces you to a stranger during a party, you won't shy away and you will naturally talk with that person.
Example 3: you are the president of the United States. You have to talk to the most powerful persons in the world. You do well, you don't fidget, you are able to talk, and you don't shy away from interacting with Vladimir Poutin.

The differences between those 3 situations: it all boils down to the social momentum you had. As a president, you had to talk to 10,000s people, even 1,000,000s around the globe. You talked to the most powerful people in your country. Therefore, it is easier for you to talk than not to talk when you are in a global summit. On your birthday, with all the people around you, it is easier for you to be talkative than to be inside your head. Having not interacted with people for 15 years makes it easier for you not to talk. The more you had social interactions, the easier it is to have new social interactions.

PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL MOMENTUM
The more you interact with people, the easier it is to interact with them. The more you interact with new people, the easier it is to interact with new people.

2-UNDERSTANDING YOUR MAGICAL POWER: How does it relate to approaching?

Whenever you feel approach anxiety, whenever you are ill at ease in your environment, it can be related to a lack of social momentum. The less you interact with new people, the more you will get anxious when you are in a situation where you force yourself to approach . The reason for this is that it is easier for your mind to stay the way it is rather than going into social mode. You don't feel like doing a math problem, or doing sports when you are playing WoW? Same goes for your mind as far as social interactions are concerned.

If you don't feel like approaching during a given night, it is because you didn't push yourself to approach before. You need to gain that social momentum, ie. you need to get your mind going into social mode.

Therefore, one good thing to get rid of AA is to gain social momentum, which means pushing your mind to go into social mode. The more you interact with new people, the easier it is to interact with new people.

Problem: "but I have to get rid of AA before approaching !". True, this is why approaching is not only about SHB11. You have to let your mind understand that approaching is normal and that it will benefit the other people. To do this, you have at first to approach the people you feel comfortable with approaching, and, as you gain a little bit of social momentum, to use it in order to approach people you wouldn't have approached before.

3-DEVELOPING YOUR MAGICAL POWER: How can we build social momentum ?

-SHORT TERM: my nights are easier when I interacted with new people before. Get SM by talking to people during the day. Talk to the cashiers, to the bus driver, to the waiter, etc.
Examples of question: "How are you doing?", "When are you going on holidays?", "What, they didn't fire you yet?"
During the night, talk to everybody in sight: the guys in the streets, the people in the queue, the bouncer, the ugly girls, the other dudes, until your minds CLICKS and tells you "dude, it's ok to approach random people, you can go & talk to that cutie at the counter". The reason for this is that you had positive feedback from the people you interacted with because it was casual conversation, and as your mind is a learning machine, he finally understood that it's ok to do it, and he grants you access to your socially at ease persona.

-LONG TERM: you do exactly the same thing, except you do it as often as possible during a long time. This way, you implement many useful habits and way of thinking, such as "if I go talk to that hot girl she will like it", or "if I talk with those random strangers they will have a good time". This happens because your mind got in the habit of letting you access your socially at ease part of yourself, after having doing it for days and nights.

4-USING YOUR MAGICAL POWER: unleashing the power of you

During the day you talk to whoever you can. This will help you to talk to other people, which will help you to talk to other people, etc. The more you do it, the easier it will, the less you will feel AA. The less you feel AA, the more you feel at ease, the more you gain acceptance, the more you grow confidence. Eventually, the more you are confident, the more attractive you are.

EXACTLY, and I think that if you look at the big picture, any AA problem can be tracked back to a lack of social momentum.

LAYMAN'S GUIDE TO TALKING TO UGLY GUYS:

-"Hey, wassup?"
-"What time is it closing?"
-"Man, you are tall / strong, you play rugby / whatever ?"
-"Where are the toilets ?"
-"I need an opinion on something..." ha ha ha
-"Do you know any good bar/ club in the area?"
-"Where were you before?"
-"Sooo... here is the party ! Hi guys, cheers"
-any conversation involving alcohol and/or girls. Maybe sports work too, I don't know, I don't talk about sports.

Hahaha, in fact when I talk to chodes I just have chodey conversations.
When the guy is cool then I just have fun with him.

Talking to ugly guys is a key piece in your game. OK, I am a bit joking, but think about it: if you can't even have a conversation with an ugly guy, how come you will be able to talk to a super hot chick?
Talking to guys and unattractive girls is important IMO because you gain SM and you learn how to have a flowing conversation. It will be too late to learn that when you are approaching your dream girl.

Momentum is EVERYTHING. Well it's a joint biggest factor, up there with intent and "not caring". Take it from someone who's tried to get around the uncomfortableness of the initial approaches in a dozen different ways over the years...

It;s like jumping into a cold pool. If you do it everyday it never feels WARM, but you're more likely to do it tomorrow if you did it today.

When I was writing that post, some time ago, I was thinking about a pretty fucked up 110% mega-chode night that I managed to turn around **2h** after entering the club when I decided I would not leave the venue before talking to somebody. So I talked to a tall guy, I said "hey, you're tall". Then we joked along, then I talked to other people, on and on, and 5 min after a dancer cougar wanted me to bring her home.

BTW the same kind of turnaround happened to me last week: awful night from 10pm to 2am, I kept pushing it, I ended with 3 girls ready to be fucked (nothing happened alas, but still) and a very cute girl doing the work and #closing me in the street at 4am after 5 min of interaction.